by Laura Remson Mitchell, emailaf752@lafn.org
- M=Mistakes. Doctors often are wrong in diagnosing people as "terminal." Also, legal decisions often treat people with "incurable" chronic disabilities as "terminal," making it all the more likely that non-terminal individuals would be covered by this bill.
- A=Abuses. Despite efforts to create safeguards, experience in the Netherlands clearly demonstrates the potential for abuse. The Netherlands has gone from looking the other way in cases of physician-assisted suicide, to looking the other way in cases of voluntary euthanasia, to looking the other way in cases of involuntary euthanasia.
- S=Stereotypes. Stereotypes, ignorance and fear of disability is what drove most people who made use of the Oregon assisted suicide option. Similar stereotypes are common in the medical profession, which typically places a lower value on the quality of life with a disability than do people who are living with a disability. Since doctors often unconsciously perpetuate the fear of disability, and since society usually assumes that suicidal feelings are perfectly normal for a person facing severe disability, the likelihood of appropriate, meaningful intervention to deal with depression and combat the feelings of hopelessness that lead to suicide are unlikely. And since physician-assisted suicide in Oregon was granted based on a fear of disability, how can we trust the state not to extend the "option" to those who already are living with disability?
- H=health-care system changes. Legalization of physician-assisted suicide will distort health-care decision making in our increasingly cost-driven system. It also will undermine the trust between doctor and patient that is essential for quality health care. We need the health-care and support services that help us to live full lives. But legalization of physician-assisted suicide is likely to make those services harder, rather than easier, for us to get. That, in turn, will reinforce fears of becoming disabled and feelings of hopelessness that lead to suicide.
- No choices=the bill requires doctors to tell patients about alternative options, but there is no requirement that any alternative to assisted suicide actually be made available to the patient. In the absence of any real choice, death by assisted suicide becomes not an autonomous choice but rather a desperate escape: death by default, not death with dignity.
